The Creepers (7 page)

How much longer did he have? The cutoff
point was dangerously close, or had it already passed? He couldn’t think
straight, and he couldn’t dwell on it because the punishment would only get
worse if he delayed. He didn’t care about causing trouble for himself, but he
didn’t want his brothers to suffer on his behalf.

Bobby jammed his gloved hands into the
pockets of his jacket. The effort did little to ward off the chill. He looked
at the fading, silver on black insignia, peeling away on the sleeve. It was the
face of a man Ol’ Randy called the Raider. Bobby allowed his mind to drift back
to that day while he waited for his brothers, one of the few pleasant ones in
all his winters.

“Well, Bobby, ya’ bout outgrown at’
there jacket and ya be needin’ a new one for this coming winter. Is it thirteen
already?" Ol’ Randy was elbow deep in a box of winter jackets in the
storage shed.

“Yes, sir,” Bobby said with a smile
planted on his face.

“Lookit you, practically a man, but not
yet. Gotta’ pop yer cherry first.”

“If I eat extra desert I’ll be a man,
sir?”

Ol’ Randy’s high-pitched laugh filled
the shed as he fell head first into the pile of jackets. He stood up, holding a
long black jacket in one hand, and wiped the tears from his red face with the
other. “Damn, son, I ain’t laughed that hard in some time. Fergit what I said
bout the cherries and such will ya. Gonna git me in trouble.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now see here, Bobby. This the perfect
coat for ya. Know why?”

Bobby looked at the black coat. It
seemed ordinary to him with the exception of the silver symbols on the sleeve
and back. Even though faded and peeled, the face of a man was clear.

“That there is the Raider of the City of
Angels.”

“Is he a hero of the war, sir?”

“No, Bobby. He’s just a symbol of the
world that used to be. But that’s not why it fits ya. No, fits ya cause to the
best of my knowledge it’s where ya’ from. Go on now, try it on." Ol’ Randy
tossed the jacket to Bobby.

Bobby wasted no time getting into the
jacket. It fit almost perfectly, though, the sleeves were a little long. “There
is a City of Angels, sir?”

“Not on this earth, Bobby. That’s just a
name of a place.”

“Was good place before world went
crazy,” Ecky said from the doorway, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his
mouth.

“Hey, Ecky, look at my new jacket.”

“Is fitting yes?" Ecky ruffled
Bobby’s hair.

“Ya’ fucking commie bastard.”

“Enough with pleasantries, Randal. Was
saying that jacket looks nice." Ecky shrugged.

“Pinko asshole speak English will ya’?”

“Was English last time checked?”

“But he’s not pink, sir.”

Ecky spit his cigarette out as a burst
of laughter hit him. Ol’ Randy joined him, and so did Bobby, though, he did not
know what was so funny. The world was a different place for him. He had never
known the life that existed before the war, and in some ways he’d never know the
cultural nuances.

He could hear his brothers’ protesting
their rude awakening, and he felt the bible thumps that followed. He buried his
head in the jacket, smelling the remnants of that day in the scent of stale
smoke. He wished Ol’ Randy were with him now, and Ecky too, for that matter.
But Ol’ Randy was out in the darkness going about Settlement business, for it
was widely know, Ol’ Randy made sure of it, that he would sleep only when dead.

The barracks door opened behind him and
Paul was the first to exit followed closely by Pete and Bryan.

“Hey, Bob-o, another morning in
paradise.”

“That’s enough of your filthy mouth,
son. Open it again and I’ll see to it that you don’t eat for a week. Now get to
steppin’ we are going to Corral.”

The boys froze at the word.

“That’s right, you heard me correctly,
you got some Creeper cleaning to do before the Lord can grace us with the
warmth of the sun, now get moving."  

To the Folks the Corral was a necessary
evil, a sacrifice borne of the need to understand their enemy completely. They
had to observe them, study them, dissect them, and use them as tools of
learning and so, with chains and collars and thick burlap hoods, they welcomed
them inside the safety of the fence. But even the youngest of the Settlement’s
inhabitants knew, you could trust a Creeper about as much as you could trust an
angry rattlesnake. In order to keep the safety of their little slice of heaven
intact they developed a system. Everyone had to pitch in when it came to the
matters of the Corral, at one time or another, and throughout the span of their
lives.

The system and the structure were simple
at first glance: make a hole in the ground to put a few Creepers in but deep
enough so they couldn’t get out. When you needed one for target practice or a
lesson you used the small crane to secure a body and yank it out. But Bobby
knew the complications of dealing with the unpredictability of the undead, and
they were far from simple.

The wooden planks and peaked roof
reminded Bobby of animal skin left too long to cure in the sun. The wood held
the ashen gray of an old man’s beard and the brittleness of his tired body.
Along the perimeter, a patchwork of chain-link fences reclaimed from the
suburbs of the countryside enclosed the structure. Two young men stood guard,
rifles resting on their shoulders at the narrow entrance.

“Sir,” they snapped to attention.

“Mornin’.”

The young men eyed the boys with
contempt, but did a poor job of hiding their smiles that spoke of impending
misery.

“It’s pretty ripe in there, sir. The Doc
was up late last night cutting one up and she’s never one to treat a Creeper
lightly. That leaves four in the pit. Parts been falling off em’ all week.”

“Very well, c’mon boys it’s time to put
you to work." Pastor Craven waved them through the gate and into the
Corral.

They shuffled in silence past the orange
jumpsuits and blood-stained hoods hanging limply from a strip of nails on the
wall. They stopped at the edge of the pit. It was said, with an air of pride,
that Pa Crannen built the pit with his bare hands many winters ago. In his
eagerness to teach the Folks he ignored one detail, and one stormy night it
came back to bite him. The pit overflowed and the Creepers floated to the top.
They took down ten men and women before the night watch knew what had happened.
The Folks begged Pa Crannen to abandon the idea altogether, but he knew the
urgency of understanding the enemy. So he devised a better system.

There were never to be more than five
Creepers in the pit at any time. When they were removed they were chained,
hooded to prevent biting, and dressed in orange jumpsuits pilfered from the
county jail. The suits made them easy targets for the watchtower and gave
everyone warning. And since then the system had never failed, in fact, the
knowledge gained was worth the early sacrifice.

Bobby waved the flies from his face to
little effect. They were so thick, buzzing around, if he were to take a deep,
open-mouthed breath he’d be eating them by the dozens. With the flies, came the
stench, boiling up and over the rim of the pit, a thick hot fog of sweet,
sickly death.

Paul vomited beside him, drawing a low
wail from the Creepers in the pit. The living dead below clawed at the muddy
walls, not out of a need to escape, they were oblivious to their imprisonment,
but out of hunger, unending hunger. The sound of their bodies rubbing together
wet and soft, the buzzing of the flies, made Bobby want to scream in horror,
but he closed his eyes and willed his sanity to a safe place.

I am to become one of you,
he thought. In
that moment he was overcome by a vast pity, a sorrow of resignation to a
predetermined fate. He didn’t feel sorry for them, they were the enemy, he felt
sorry for himself, not for what he’d become, but what he had caused himself to
become.

Pastor Craven’s hand on his shoulder
pulled him from the abyss of submission. “Get on that crane, Bobby. The rest of
you get suited up, gloves, goggles and masks. C’mon now, the Lord demands a
swift hand.”

Corral duty was often used as a form of
punishment. The severity of the duration of that punishment was determined by
the weight of the crime. If one were to get drunk and act the fool, that deemed
one clean up duty. Curse during recess, or lunch, or anywhere, and by birth you
didn’t carry the name of Ol’ Randy, you got a week. All the boys of the
Settlement spent their fair share of time cleaning up the filth, but none spent
as much time within the slop as Bobby and his brothers. They had the cleaning
of the Corral down to a science, a fucking magnificent cock sucker of an art
form, as Paul put it.

Bobby fell into the cadence of routine
as he operated the rickety knobs of the rusty crane. His brothers stood out of
the swinging arc of the crane with hoods and collars at the ready. One by one
Bobby hoisted the Creepers up, taking extra care to keep the wiggling undead
feet just off the ground to allow his brothers better leverage. Their calm
movements were those so used to what they were doing, that they moved with an
air of nonchalance. It wasn’t arrogant at all. They worked with an attention
unmatched by even the fiercest First War soldiers. The Corral was their second
home, second only to the back of Craven’s hand.

The boys were well aware of their
standing within the Settlement. It wasn’t fair, especially since the passing of
Ma and Pa Crannen, but it was better than the alternative. They had food,
shelter, education, and each other. The only thing they concerned themselves
with now was their own safety.

Pastor Craven watched the boys closely,
but not out of concern for them, instead, he wondered if the punishments were
too light. The boys were getting quite good at the task of cleaning the Corral.
As he followed their quick, exact movements he began to formulate a new set of
punishments. Faith would not let him kill them, but he was damn sure going to
make them work for their places at the table.

Bobby compartmentalized his fear, boxed
it up neatly, and left it in the back of his mind. He no longer felt the sting
of the wound, he felt only the stiffness of his fingers as he worked the crane.
In no time at all the boys had the Creepers hooded and harmless. With the aid
of chain collars, on the end of long steel bars, they forced the walking dead
against the wall where they were chained, effectively subdued, but one could
never be sure, so Bryan kept close watch with a rifle.

They were soldiers first, and kids
second. From the first day they entered the Settlement the boys were trained to
kill, to survive, and to overcome the hell on Earth that had befallen their world,
without exception. To fail in those tasks was to die . . . or worse.

Bobby shut the crane’s noisy engine down
and stepped into a pair of waders. The rubber had seen better days, cracked and
dry, it wouldn’t be long before they failed in keeping the bodily fluids out.

“Bobby, I’ll go down this time. It’s my
turn,” Peter said, looking even paler than usual in the uneven light from the
hanging bulbs overhead.

“It’s not your turn . . . it’s Ryan’s.
I’ll go,” Bobby said. He had to do something, move his hands, get to work,
anything. If he didn’t, the monster in the box at the back of his mind would
break free and tear his fragile bravery apart.

“But,” Peter protested.

“I’ll go,” Bobby said in a whisper.

“Let him go,” Paul said, removing the
aluminum ladder from the hooks on the wall. He and Bryan set it in the pit and
gathered a length of rope and a bucket.

Concentrating on his balance Bobby
started the descent into the filthy pit. The waders were too big in the feet,
like floppy clown shoes, but he made it down without a fall. His feet sank into
the muddy, rotting stew. Between the leaky roof, the putrescent decay, and
rowdy guards pissing on the hated enemy, the bottom of the pit was knee deep in
rank, chunky slop. It was the brothers’ chore to empty it . . . one bucket at a
time.

“You ready, Bobby?” Paul called down to
him.

“Let’s get it over with,” he replied, a
half-submerged femur bobbed next to him.

The key to getting through Corral duty
as quickly as possible was having a disciplined line. They were down a man, and
that meant each of them would have to work twice as hard and three times as
fast. The goal was to get each bucket up, out, and into a shallow basin behind
the Corral where it was burned off. It all seemed so unnecessary, but there
were lessons to be learned from it: one got used to the scent of the enemy, and
one learned not to repeat the mistake that got one there in the first place.

“Incoming,” Paul shouted as he hurled
the bucket into the pit. It splashed next to Bobby.

Maggots floated around him, crawled on
the waders, but Bobby ignored them. He filled the first bucket and set it on
the metal hook at the end of the rope. As the first bucket was on its way up
another plopped into the muck and Bobby set the pace. He worked like a madman.
He didn’t have to worry about his arms hurting him in the days to come. The
Fection would take him soon enough. But before he did he owed his brothers one
last effort.